Simmy Abroad

OK - so I spoke too soon, and you got lucky. It turns out that I can't subscribe other people to my own blog, which I suppose is the way it should be. So, if you would like, you can go to http://conserveuganda.wordpress.com and subscribe yourself, or you can just drop by on occasion when you are trying to avoid the work you are supposed to be doing. Take care! Mark... read more

Hello All, It has been a while since you have heard from us through this site. Part of the reason is that I started a new blog back in January, called Wild Thoughts from Uganda (www.conserveuganda.wordpress.com), that is focused on social and environmental issues in Uganda rather than just our family travels and travails. I haven't been writing for the last few weeks since we were in the U.S., but I generally try to post about 3 times per week. You can dig down in the archives for the posts of the last six months. I am taking the liberty of adding your e-mail to that blog instead of this one. The first e-mail you receive from Wordpress should give you instructions on how to unsubscribe if you wish to do so. My apologies to those ... read more

Here is a more detailed article about the situation in and around Kampala: http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/10_feared_dead_in_city_riots12_91137.shtml... read more

I'm sure this isn't even making a blip in the news in the U.S., but there have been some isolated riots here in Kampala in the last couple of days. The Kabaka (king) of Buganda was planning a visit to an area of his kingdom known as Kayunga. There is a minority group there called the Banyala who want to secede from the kingdom or, actually, claim they were never a part of it. The government has gotten involved, siding against the Kabaka, which has ticked off the Baganda. Some also claim that the president has been channeling money to the Banyala to weaken the power of the Kabaka. Idi Amin basically shut down the kings (there are currently 4 - 5 kingdoms within Uganda), but President Museveni re-instated them shortly after taking control of Uganda ... read more

Can you have religion without hate? The church, here in Uganda, has taken another big step towards increasing the amount of hate in the world. There is a witch hunt going on now for gay people. That's right - in a country where people die daily of HIV, malnutrition and malaria, people are rising up to combat the horrible evil of homosexuality. This country can't rise up as a unified population to fight corruption, which affects them on a daily basis and keeps them from getting badly needed services, and it can't train teachers. However, it can mobilize people in an instant to hunt down gay people, who are having no effect whatsoever on their lives. Maybe if there were more trained teachers in this country, you wouldn't get idiotic responses like this to a newspaper ... read more

“The problem we Africans have is that when we see you people with light skin, we admire you and we want to have what you have. We want to walk in your shoes - but we want them to be your shoes. We don't want to know where you got them so that we can work to get a pair of our own.” These were the words of a philosopher in the guise of a waiter at the cafe I went to this morning. I have so many thoughts about what he said, especially given that my day began with two well-fed, healthy-looking 16-ish-year-old girls asking me for 100 shillings when I stepped out of our gate. They pretty much crumbled when I asked them “why”. I think because the only reason they could have given ... read more

(by Devin) Language can illustrate so much about a culture. Eskimos who have an intimate relationship with the Arctic have more than a dozen words for snow. In India, there is no word in which a woman can be possessive of a man (“my man” becomes “I belong to that man” in Hindi) except when she is speaking of a slave or servant. And in Uganda, I came across a new word recently that made me think deeply about the differences between Uganda and the US. I was giving several of my office colleagues a ride downtown after work one steaming hot day, and had my car window down. We were laughing together. And then my friend said, “We have a word for that in Luganda.” “A word for what?” I responded. She gestured to my ... read more

For those of you who have been waiting patiently for more Simmy...... read more

I'm rarely at a loss for words. We've been back a week, though, and I still don't know what to write. What is there to say that hasn't already been said? It was important to visit the memorials - it made it feel so much more personal and brought the scale of it home to us. At the memorial centre in Kigali, more than 250,000 of the 1 million victims are buried, and more are added each year as their remains are found. This genocide was different from the others in this century. And there have been far too many in the last 100 years. The memorial in Kigali (www.kigalimemorialcentre.org) has a section dedicated to the genocides in Germany (6 million), Turkey/Armenia (1.5 million), Bosnia (200,000), Cambodia (2 million) and Namibia (65,000). And those are just ... read more

I'm sitting on the floor of a seedy hotel room, feeling the vibration of the night club that we had no idea existed under our hotel. We are halfway through our time in Rwanda and we have not yet visited a genocide memorial site. I wanted to write this post tonight, before we visit the genocide museum here in Kigali tomorrow. Why? It all comes down to the Museum of the Native American in Washington D.C. When I visited there two years ago, I was powerfully struck by one thing about it. One thing that was very intentional on the parts of the curators (the curators were, by the way, selected from tribes throughout North America). We've all been to museums in America that have the dioramas of the “noble savage” in buckskins and feathers. They ... read more